Douglas Brown

Douglas Brown wanted to play college rugby, only his school didn’t have a team. But instead of settling, Brown created his own team. It’s been 35 years since he did that, but many of its players have since developed rugby teams of their own and each year, members of the original team and teams that have come after reunite in Idaho.

That kind of drive and ability to focus on big goals has seen Brown through the peaks and valleys of an exceptional professional career. His latest adventure, All Star Directories, has in just five years become one of the fastest growing online publishers of school directories, matching millions of students with the schools that best meet their educational needs. Every time a prospective student uses All Star Directories to find a match, the university pays the company a commission.

Within the company, Brown sets clear expectations for employees and literally gives them ownership in the business’ success through an innovative quarterly profit-sharing plan. The plan, along with a robust hiring process, has built a culture focused on winning and on Brown’s six principles of success: Treat each other well, make good decisions, execute effectively, work with a sense of urgency, commit yourself to continuous improvement and create customer loyalty.

“We each have a deep responsibility to serve the common good,” Brown says.

And every day, he reminds himself, just as he did during his rugby days, that his purpose is to strive for success and to make All Star Directories the best it can be.

Finalists:

Pamala Temple

Founder and CEO, A Place for Mom (Seattle)

Pamala Temple, a career eldercare professional, launched A Place for Mom with the idea that there had to be a better way for families to find care for their aging relatives. Both of Temple’s parents were entrepreneurs, so she had the kind of drive needed to start a business. Her background in housing for seniors gave her contact with some of the largest facilities in the nation and insight into the difficulty families had making informed decisions. She teamed up with two co-founders who had previously built a website to help people find vacation homes. The team developed a web platform called You’ve Got Leads that helped her 400-strong commissioned sales force match families with the most appropriate facility. Now, the company is working on new platforms, including MySearch, which allows customers to contact a personal adviser online, track properties and rate them. A Place for Mom now has more than 17,000 properties signed across the U.S.

David Childers

President, CEO, EthicsPoint (Lake Oswego, Ore.)

If a co-worker is misbehaving (or worse, if the boss is), whom do you call? That was a question EthicsPoint wanted to help companies answer when it was founded in 1999.  CEO and President David Childers joined the firm in 2002, and has continued to steer the company in that direction.

EthicsPoint enables organizations to foster a business culture of integrity and compliance, helping them protect their culture and reputation by automating business processes. It helps businesses report and identify issues and behavior that may be inconsistent with their code of conduct. More than 2,000 organizations across the country use EthicsPoint’s hotline, web reporting and case management services.

In addition, Childers works to help keep EthicsPoint’s culture intact. The company recognizes the importance of hiring team-oriented people who share the same desire to safeguard the company’s ethics, integrity and values.

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